Winter – Into Darkness
Ξ April 25th, 2011 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Album Reviews |
Strange choice to listen to and review on a beautiful spring day here in Scotland, but there you go. This IS the ultimate Death/Doom album, one of the most horrific, ungodly records you will ever hear, and partnered with acts like Burning Witch and Portal could be the horrible, twisted sound of the end of the world. The actual end of the world, where everyone is dead and the tectonic plates all groan and wretch upon each other as they are destroyed.
‘Into Darkness’ came out in 1990, and there had been nothing quite like it then, as there still is now. Yes, we have doom and we have death metal, and we’ve had some delightful mixes of those ideas to create some pretty nihilistic stuff but NOTHING can approach the vibe you get here. It’s suffocating, it is endless, it is seriously miserable. But it is a stunning achievement to create something over 20 years ago and it still be regarded as unparalleled. Perhaps it’s because it was their only release, who knows, but the material is classic nonetheless. Album opener ‘Oppression/Freedom’ is the blueprint for any death/doom band that has ever existed, and thats only an instrumental. This continues throughout the album, with a couple of changes of pace breaking up the slog (the Frostian ‘Servants of the Warsmen’ or the mid paced thud of ‘Eternal Frost’ do move away from a deathly crawl). But the appeal here is the slooooooow pace and depressive atmosphere.
Few albums have ever created such a feeling of dread and apocalyptic decay as ‘Into Darkness’ does. It’s like watching a crumbling city swathed in snow, filth and decay lying frozen and all life extinguished. Pretty bleak listening in the springtime, but its a steady reminder of the other side of our death/rebirth life cycle. Essential if you appreciate the darker side of life
